The terror law that's tearing Canada in two

When Bill C-36 — otherwise known as the 2001 Anti-Terrorism Act — was first introduced in Parliament, many human rights advocates and legal experts opposed it. One of their main arguments was that Canada didn’t need a specific law to fight terrorism — that the Criminal Code was more than sufficient to allow law enforcement to bring charges against terrorists.

Bill C-36 was adopted a few months after 9/11. Many thought at the time that it would be a legal outlier, a one-off, driven by the tragedy in New York. We know better now: C-36 was only the opening act, the beginning of a series of new laws specially aimed at terrorism.

In fact, what C-36 did to our legislative landscape wasn’t limited to the introduction of new and invasive powers for intelligence and police forces. It also launched a dangerous idea — that terrorism is somehow fundamentally different from other forms of violent crime and that it must be fought with a unique set of tools. In other words, the post-9/11 cleared the way for a system of parallel justice in Canada: one law for the “regular” criminals and one for the terrorists.

When Canadian police and intelligence services mobilized against organized crime in the 1990s, the police adapted their tactics to suit the nature of the work: more infiltration, more targeted surveillance. But they did their work under ordinary criminal law; when gang members were charged, it was under existing sections of the Criminal Code, not new laws specifically adapted for “gangsters”.

I’m not saying terrorism shouldn’t be fought with adapted techniques — it should be. But the emphasis should be put on other aspects of anti-terrorism: on prevention, on political, economical and social policies, and on education. And once terror suspects are brought to justice, they should be judged according to the gravity of their actions — not according to whether they’ve been labelled a “terrorist” or merely a violent criminal.

Canada’s transition to a parallel justice system didn’t stop in 2001, of course. In 2014, the Conservative government came up with a new citizenship law, Bill C-24. Part of this bill became law in May 2015. This time, the target was citizenship.

The current Canadian government is using the excuse of the terrorist threat to create two classes of citizens under the law, divided on the basis of their origins.

Before Bill C-24, revocation of citizenship was limited to naturalized Canadians who acquired their citizenship through false representations. With the new law, dual citizens can have their citizenship stripped away from them if they commit an act of terrorism, espionage or treason. The law only applies to naturalized citizens or those who were born in Canada but can claim citizenship in another country through one of their parents — even if they have have no ties with that country whatsoever. Meanwhile, if you were born in Canada and can’t be eligible for citizenship in another country, you can’t be stripped of your Canadian citizenship — no matter what kind of crime you’ve committed.

The new grounds for revocation are very broad and seem to be based on some spot evaluation of the offender’s loyalty to Canada. What isn’t clear — as the Canadian Bar Association has pointed out — is why the loyalty of dual nationals should be questioned more than that of other Canadians, or why their loyalty should determine the status of citizenship. This is a very slippery slope and we’re standing on top of it.

The new process of revoking citizenship doesn’t involve a judge (except in cases where the minister himself choses to hold a hearing). This, says the government, makes the process more ‘efficient’. So there is no accountability in law here, no process by which someone could appeal the minister’s decision. The government can shout about the threat of “jihadi terrorism” as much as it likes, but the end result will be the same: a two-tier system divided between ‘privileged’ Canadians who were born here and ‘suspect’ dual citizens — including those who have been exonerated by a court but who are still seen by the government as terrorists.

Since last June, the government has sent notices of citizenship revocation to a few convicted terrorists. One of these targeted individuals is Zakaria Amara, who was born in Jordan and has dual citizenship. He was convicted for his role in the Toronto 18 terrorism plot. In a tweet sent by Defence Minister Jason Kenney, the minister stated that Amara hated Canada so much that he “forfeited his own citizenship” by plotting to murder hundreds of Canadians.

This is clearly a very ideological position that shouldn’t be allowed to prevail in a democracy. Our feelings of love or hate for a country — our ‘loyalty’ — cannot and should not determine the legitimacy of our citizenship. Amara didn’t like Canada and was ready to kill innocent people, and as a consequence he was punished with a life sentence of imprisonment. Why do we have to double the punishment and revoke his Canadian citizenship? Can’t he be rehabilitated? Can’t the hate he felt at some point in his life be replaced one day with compassion and understanding?

Is sending him back to Jordan supposed to make us feel safer? Isn’t the rationale for Canada’s participation in the anti-Islamic State air war the need to keep the terrorists over there from coming over here? How does sending convicted terrorists back there address the problem? And how is a country like Jordan supposed to react to receiving a convicted terrorist? Will they accept him or will he become stateless? Will he be tortured there as further punishment, or as a way to obtain information?

Terrorism is an ongoing threat, here and around the world. The current Canadian government is using the excuse of the terrorist threat to create two classes of citizens under the law, divided on the basis of their origins. But in treating terrorism as a special class of crime — and dual citizens as a special class of criminal — the federal government is perverting our laws, our citizenship and of our democracy … dividing our society, making it weaker in the process.

Monia Mazigh is an academic and author. She is the national coordinator of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group. Mazigh was born and raised in Tunisia and immigrated to Canada in 1991. Her husband, Maher Arar, was deported to Syria in 2002, where he was tortured and held without charges for over a year. She campaigned tirelessly for his release. Mazigh holds a PhD in finance from McGill University. In 2008, she published a memoir, Hope and Despair, about her pursuit of justice. In 2014, she published her first novel, Mirrors and Mirages. Her second novel, Du pain et du jasmine, came out in September 2015. You can follow her on Twitter @MoniaMazigh or on her blog www.moniamazigh.com

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.